“You eat some dinner?” asked Seryozha, suddenly drawing a pirozhok out of his pocket and sitting down to eat it. “Dinner … a most good plan.”
A look of intense spiritual hunger came over Wilfred Chew’s face and he swallowed once or twice, as if calling his useless words back into his throat from the unheeding air. Anna had made a packet of rice-filled pirozhki for him and he stood eating, swinging his weight from one foot to the other, looking hungrily from Seryozha’s face to the hills and back again. Yet even utterance uncomprehended was a relief to him, though it was rather like playing squash racquets against oneself. After a moment, therefore, Wilfred began again to utter, with his mouth full, on a rather lower note than before, as he watched Seryozha’s face wistfully for some possible freak of understanding.
“Yes, I eat my dinners. Twice I eat with three other men, namely, Williams, Banks, and Feathers. Feathers invites me—he is very pressing. He says: ‘You must join our mess, Mr. Chew, I will not take no for an answer.’ So of course I bow pleasantly and accept the politeness. When I sit down among them, they say, ‘You do not drink wine, Mr. Chew?’ I say, ‘No, gentlemen, I have been brought up by Reverend Mr. Oswald Fawcett to consider alcohol as a moral danger.’ Feathers, who was not really, I think, a moral man, says, ‘Good egg! (this is a London expression of joy). That’s just as I thought,’ he says; ‘there’ll be all the more moral danger for us.’ Of course he was merely joking. Nevertheless, they did not invite me to take wine again, showing that my words made an impression of moral determination on them. Indeed, Mr. Banks once said to me, ‘It has meant a good deal to us today, Mr. Chew, to have a teetotaller in our mess.’ ”
Seryozha was familiar with the English word “moral” by now, for he had known Mr. Chew three days.
“It is pity you have not seeing our singing girls of Chi-tao-kou,” he said, happily, feeling that he was at last in the swim of this flood of information. “Some are not too bad. The little Matvievna—her skin is most white. Before, when I was young, I thinked, I shall marry her, but after, I find yist only singing girl. A most merry girl.”
“Christians should avoid such women,” said Wilfred Chew, seriously. “They are a moral danger. If you find self-control difficult, Mr. Malinin, you should pray—or perhaps marry.”
“Oi! marry …” said Seryozha, spurting out crumbs of pirozhki as he laughed. “I have money nyet. I give all to my mamma.”
His heart, however, warmed to Wilfred in response to this tribute to his maturity. Certainly, he thought, once a man is safely away from his home, the world takes him for the man he is.
“One could marry with a certain amount of worldly wisdom and still remain a Christian,” said Wilfred Chew. “For instance, there is a very delightful young lady of your own race—Miss Ostapenko—who lives at Mi-san, near Seoul. Sir Theo Mustard and myself, when motoring from Seoul on an expedition, asked at Miss Ostapenko’s father’s home for some water for the radiator, and were invited to stay to tea.”
“Ostapenko … ? How is her father called?”
“She is Miss Tatiana Ostapenko. Her father is called Pavel Ostapenko, Esquire.”
“Tscht! Tatiana Pavlovna. She marries nobody. Alexander Petrovitch Weber speaked about her. She is many times betrothed; she is many times saying this, saying that; she is not good for mans. Alexander Petrovitch say she has betrothed seven times—he say that Tatiana is married, perhaps, to a devil. Devil is inside her. He speak so. He speak, yist better to be dead nor to be betrothed to Tatiana Pavlovna.”
“Oh, that is ridiculous! I noticed a sort of shyness about her, but who knows what is in the heart of a pure young girl? She is certainly extremely pure. And perhaps of an icelike nature. Yet she is considered beautiful. As a Chinese I should not think her beautiful, but as a Londoner, I can see that she is a little like the late Queen Alexandra (widow of the late King Edward Seventh) in features. Also, Mr. Malinin, she will have a fortune. It is good for a Christian to make friends a little with the mammon of unrighteousness, though not, of course, to the point of serving two masters.”
“It is more good not to be dead,” said Seryozha. “I like better to be alife with Sonia Matvievna nor to be dead with Tatiana Pavlovna. I have speak much with Alexander Petrovitch Weber these last days in Chi-tao-kou. He speak like this: Tatiana Pavlovna not good. She is like dead. With her a man must not be alife. She make a man dead, like a devil.’ Alexander Petrovitch speak also: ‘She is finish of me. She has taken away my life.’ He was nice chap, too. I hope he will soon be alife again. I speak to him about Sonia Matvievna. He speak, ‘So? She is easy to love? So?’ ”
Seryozha mimicked young Weber’s long-drawn-out “So‑o‑o‑o?” with a question sound at the end of it. “I speak: ‘Indeed yes, she is most easy indeed. More better nor a devil.’ And so I think. My papa speak: ‘I think this girl Tatiana Ostapenko is perhaps
